"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 4:12:21 PM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 12:49:24 AM UTC-5, Fred J. McCall wrote:

And can put up a whopping 4kg payload. That's around 0.007% of the
payload of a Falcon Heavy. In other words, you could stick tens of
thousands of such payloads on a single Falcon Heavy.


But with miniaturization of electronics today, isn't that 4 kg payload
very effective for many applications?


For very selective definitions of "very effective" and "many
applications". But you're missing the point. A Falcon Heavy launch
costs just under $100 million. So if your sounding rocket costs more
than $10 thousand or so per launch (and it most certainly does) it is
cheaper to launch 10,000 of the tiny payloads on Falcon Heavy than it
is to launch them on a tiny launcher.


That would depend on how many payloads need to be launched and to where.
How often would 10,000 small payloads need to be launched at the same
and to the same place?


How likely is it that some launch of some other payload won't have a
few kilograms of extra capacity? THAT, after all, is the whole driver
behind 'cubesats'; they're so small that they can essentially 'ride
free' on other launches.


One small payload to one particular place might be effective to launch
on one small rocket.


And you'll need to do that perhaps once every decade or so (which is
why they're not making this TEST BED into a working launch system).

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw